always exerted a strong influence against the higher training, and of late it has become alarmingly popular in our very strongholds of a liberal education.

It may prove a dangerous experiment in education to allow the modern to take the place of the ancient languages, which have been for so many centuries the basis of the best training the world has yet known. A single generation may suffice to show our lost ground, but centuries may not afford time to regain it.

A knowledge of French and German may enable the American trader to extend his commercial relations and rapidly to gain wealth, or the tourist to make a much more pleasant trip abroad; but this education only enables him to pass readily from one bustling country to another, where he will still find his fellow-traveller snatching his hasty meal, reading his damp newspaper, and content to become the connecting link between the rail-car and the telegraph-wire. When studying Latin and Greek, we are forced out of the present, and are obliged to extend our horizon, and, like the near-sighted at sea, attain a more healthy vision. It has a wonderfully calming influence on young America to spend a few years studying those old heathen languages, which after two thousand years furnish the whole civilized world their models of expression in language, art, and law.

Though only a small proportion of the whole number of pupils now reach the High School, its elevating influence is felt on all the lower grades; and, as fast as the people learn to value education as increasing one's manhood or womanhood by developing the powers of enjoyment and usefulness rather than as a means of gaining wealth, they will make greater exertions to furnish their children the best possible.

It is hoped that this attempt to put standard literature into the hands of young children will receive encouragement, and that a free discussion of the subject may lead to such changes in the course of instruction in the Public Schools as shall give to each study the proportion of time its importance may fairly claim.

E. G.

JANUARY, 1887.

SINCE writing the above we have issued a dozen or more books in our series of Classics for Children without any abridgment. The further we carry this experiment, the more we are convinced that pupils between the ages of twelve and fifteen are capable of taking in any of Scott's, or other similar works, without abridg

LIFE OF WALTER SCOTT.

ABRIDGED FROM HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

WA

ALTER SCOTT, my father, was born in 1729, and educated to the profession of a Writer to the Signet.1 I was born, as I believe, on the 15th August, 1771. I showed every sign of health and strength until I was about eighteen months old. One night, I have been often told, I showed great reluctance to be caught and put to bed; and after being chased about the room, was apprehended and consigned to my dormitory with some difficulty. It was the last time I was to show such personal agility. In the morning, I was discovered to be affected with the fever which often accompanies the cutting of large teeth. It held me three days. On the fourth, when they went to bathe me as usual, they discovered that I had lost the power of my right leg. My grandfather, an excellent anatomist as well as physician, the late worthy Alexander Wood, and many others of the most respectable of the faculty, were consulted. There appeared to be no dislocation or sprain; blisters and other topical remedies were applied in vain. The advice of my grandfather, Dr. Rutherford, that I should be sent to reside in the country, to give the chance of natural exertion, excited by free air and liberty, was first resorted to; and before I have the recollection of the slightest event, I was, agreeably to this friendly counsel, an inmate in the farmhouse of Sandy-Knowe.

It is here at Sandy-Knowe, in the residence of my paternal grandfather, already mentioned, that I have the first consciousness of existence.

My grandmother, in whose youth the old Border depredations were matter of recent tradition, used to tell me many a tale of Watt of Harden, Wight Willie of Aikwood, Jamie Telfer of the fair Dodhead, and other heroes - merrymen all of the persuasion and calling of Robin Hood and Little John. Two or three old books which lay in the window-seat were explored for my amusement in the tedious winter-days. Automathes, and Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany, were my favorites, although at a later period an odd volume of Josephus's Wars of the Jews divided my partiality.

My kind and affectionate aunt, Miss Janet Scott, whose memory will ever be dear to me, used to read these works to me with admirable patience, until I could repeat long passages by heart. The ballad of Hardyknute I was early master of, to the great annoyance of almost our only visitor, the worthy clergyman of the parish, Dr. Duncan, who had not patience to have a sober chat interrupted by my shouting forth this ditty. Methinks I now see his tall, thin, emaciated figure, his legs cased in clasped gambadoes, and his face of a length that would have rivalled the Knight of La Mancha's, and hear him exclaiming, "One may as well speak in the mouth of a cannon as where that child is."

I was in my fourth year when my father was advised that the Bath waters might be of some advantage to my lameness. My affectionate aunt, although such a journey promised to a person of her retired habits anything but pleasure or amusement, undertook as readily to accompany me to the wells of Bladud as if she had expected all the delight that ever the prospect of a watering-place held out to its most impatient visitants. My health was by this time a good deal confirmed by the country air and the influence of that imperceptible